Two weeks ago, Sara Blakely — the visionary who bravely pulled women out of their pantyhose and plunged them into Spanx shapewear, making herself a billionaire in the process — started teasing a new game-changing product. Teaser videos filled her social feeds. Hints were dropped in interviews and newsletters. The words “revolutionary” and “disruptive” were dropped like names at the White House Correspondence Dinner.
This was going to be BIG.
Personally, from the moment I watched the first Instagram story, I was awash in anticipation. What Blakely-designed creation would I and every other over-30 influencer be turning into a billion-dollar success story this time? Whatever it was, I already needed ten.
Then, at the end of last week, the revelation came: Blakely had “invented” a line of athletic-shoe high heels called Sneex.
As I sat bewildered by the possibility that I now lived in a world where a sneaker high heel was no longer just an urban shoe myth, I struggled to process my confusion. So when influencers began speculating that this ugliness was actually a clever marketing gimmick, I bought in hard. Perhaps Blakely was hiding the real product behind something utterly monstrous to deepen the impact of the reveal?
Yes, that had to be it.
My hopes once again higher than the heel on her prototype-gimmick shoe, I waited for the real announcement on August 20th. I even scheduled time on the first day of my vacation to ensure that I could write a post extolling the virtues of Blakely’s new creation. I was all-in. So imagine the deep chasm of disappointment that emerged like a sinkhole in my heart when I learned that Sneex was not just a bit of public relations genius but the actual, live-in-the-flesh product.
Sneaker high heels are not a love letter, Sara. They’re a wearable cry for help.
They’re also deeply, comically, almost fatally impractical, an SNL sketch gone horribly awry. There is no occasion in my life as an attorney, mother, and woman who loves a dressy event when I need to wear high heels but can also wear a velcro’ed toddler sneaker on stilts. I’m more likely to wear actual stilts. At least then, I could reach things on the high shelves without help from my husband.
Even the author of this Vogue piece about Sneex hid her face behind her hair to ensure that she could not be identified as someone who wears hybrid sneaker heels.
Upon realizing that Sneex was not a nostalgic early 2000s Punk’d throwback, I immediately posted the announcement video to my Instagram. In this difficult time, I needed community more than ever. My readers did not disappoint with their responses.
“These are tragic.”
“Checks Calendar: Nope, August 20, not April 1.”
“Does she need a big loss to write off? This has to be a tax avoidance scheme.”
“This is why rich people need more friends who will humble them.”
“Her whole announcement video shows work pumps the entire time and then she ends up with the ugly sneaker high heel!?!? No. No one asked for that. No one is paying you $595 for that!”
Oh, yes, did I forget to mention that a pair of these Hy-Heels (yes, that’s what they’re actually called) cost more than my monthly car payment? Well, they do.
It’s a testimony to the genius of Sara Blakely that even as I stare at a sneaker high heel that makes my eyes bleed, I still want to order a pair just to see if I’m wrong. Maybe I can wear them to court under the widest palazzo suit pants the world has ever seen. Or under an evening gown hemmed to french-kiss the floor. You know, so my feet can be comfortable but no one ever, ever finds out that I’m wearing sneaker high heels. But if the only way I can bear to think about putting on your shoes is if I completely conceal them from public view, doesn’t that give me my answer?
And also, does Blakely know how much money $595 is? Or is the cost of two weeks worth of groceries for an American family just rounding error to a woman who belongs to the Three Comma Club?
Maybe Blakely thinks she’s competing with Jimmy Choo or Christian Louboutin whose shoes cost even more, but neither brand has ever claimed that their footwear wouldn’t make your toes fracture. They sell those ankle breakers to women who want you to know that they can afford that level of suffering. Louboutin paints the soles red to hide the blood (and to make sure that no one near you fails to notice the thousand-dollar bill on your feet).
In Sneex’ category, Inez and Sarah Flint are playing the pain-free high heel game for around half of the cost. My readers, professional women over-30 are Blakely’s customers, and yet, my own sales metrics tell me that even at $298, the brands mentioned above are still a reach for most women.
InStyle may be sure Sneex are about to sell out, but I highly doubt it. A pricey running shoe-high heel hybrid is likely to generate more pained sideways glances than bringing up AOC at your Great Aunt Mona’s Thanksgiving dinner party.
Jokes aside, I’m genuinely broken hearted about this announcement and the shoe’s delusional price tag. It feels very much like Blakely set out to make a comfortable, traditional high-heel only to realize it was impossible. Then, instead of calling it quits, she decided that she had the gravitas to convince women to trade in their pumps for sneakers with a lift kit. As if we would all strap down the velcro tabs on our Sneex, march down Fifth Avenue arm in arm, and burn our sensible pumps and sky high stilettos in a barrel outside Bergdorf Goodman.
I was genuinely ready for Blakely to disrupt the shoe industry. I was ready to love wearing high heels again, to strut down a sidewalk at midnight on my way to an Uber and have a barefoot, tipsy twenty-something ask me who made my shoes. I deeply wanted to feel that pang of superiority when I told her how comfortable they were. But it was not to be.
Blakely lifted the curtain on her revolutionary, game-changing, disruptive invention to the sound of silence. But it appears she couldn’t hear the crickets over the din of hundreds of yes-women and Gayle King telling her how phenomenal it was. But her customer base definitely heard the quiet as we returned our credit cards to the safety of our wallets.
{all images are credited to the Sneex website}
